REVIEWS AND BOOK NOTICES. 
Tar Human Brarin.*— As the title indicates, the main purpose 
of this work is anatomical rather than physiological; for the 
author well says that ‘not the least of the obstacles in the way of 
solving the problem” of the relation between mental faculties and 
cerebral convolutions is the present ‘ difficulty of recognizing the 
constant unity of form in the multiplicity of individual varia- 
tions :” and he wishes his outline figures “to be regarded not so 
much as pictures as maps by which one may find his way more 
easily in this region.” In other words, the four diagrams of the 
human brain as seen from the left side, from above, from below 
and from the mesial surface, must be accepted by the reader, not 
as accurate representations of any single brain, but as the gener- 
alized results of the author’s comparison of several brains, the indi- 
vidual variations of which are capable of being referred to these 
diagrams as types. 
The value of such a generalization might be estimated if the 
author had given us the number of individuals upon which it is 
based; his statement that fetal brains were studied, is so far 
satisfactory as evidence of a correct method; but in the absence 
of any figures of these latter, we can test the correctness of his 
generalization only by comparing his diagrams with actual speci- 
mens. And without going into technical details, which would be 
here out of place, we must state that such a comparison with ten 
cerebral hemispheres, representing four different periods of foetal 
life, has enabled us to confirm Ecker’s views with respect to the 
nature of only two main outer fissures, those of Sylvius and of 
. Rolando (centralis), respecting which there has never been any 
disagreement. We are the more willing to admit this failure to 
agree, because our author himself dissents from previous writers. 
But while insisting upon the differences from his type pattern, 
which are manifested by our specimens, we are firmly convinced 
of the futility of establishing a pattern based upon them or upon 4 
much larger number of specimens. Indeed we hail the discrep- 
ž*mha fA ar z 1 aheeryations, 
especially upon their development in the fœtus. Intended for the use of phy ge" 
By Alexander Ecker of Freiburg (1869). Translated by Robert T. Edes, M.D. 1 
8vo. pp. 87. 
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